A procedure of a current picture referring to a low layer picture in scaleable video coding (SVC) is called inter-layer prediction. Among the inter-layer prediction procedures, a procedure of referring to texture information of a lower spatial layer picture is called inter-layer texture prediction.
The inter-layer texture prediction in the SCV includes two modes, that is, a constrained inter-layer texture prediction mode and a single-loop-decoding constrained inter-layer texture prediction mode.
In the single-loop-decoding constrained inter-layer texture prediction mode for SVC, the macroblocks in the current to-be-encoded input picture can refers to only intrablocks in lower spatial layer pictures indicated by indicators inserted into a slice header of the current input picture.
In other words, in the single-loop-decoding constrained inter-layer texture prediction mode, only one lower spatial layer picture indicated by the slice indicator can be referred by all the macroblocks in the current input picture, but lower spatial layer pictures that are lower than the lower spatial layer picture indicated by the slice indicator cannot be referred.